Some African Music

Juluka: Johnny Clegg & Juluka collectionMy favorite Juluka record, Ubuhle Bemvelo - their magnificent collection of rocked up Zulu folk songs - is out of print and hard to find. This collection will have to do.

Miriam Makeba: World of Miriam MakebaThe Grand Dame of African music in the United States, Miriam Makeba is perhaps better known here as a politically active folk singer than as an early pioneer of Afro-pop and township jazz.

November 04, 2007

Middle name tag

A couple of weeks ago Amodini (who has both a general stuff blog and one for Hindi films) tagged me with the "middle name tag." I was rude and didn't respond right away, because I was overwhelmed with work there for a few weeks and haven't had time for too much blogging. I've had a reprieve, though - a trial that had been scheduled to begin three weeks from now has been moved to the spring - and so I wanted to thank Amodini, and pick up this tag.

The idea is as follows:

1. You must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name.2. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag.

So here we go:

M: Middle name. I have one. In fact, unlike many people, I use mine regularly, preferring to write my name out in full - first, middle, last - in correspondence, court papers, and even informal settings. My name doesn't sound right to me without it. Both of my brothers have middle names too, but they don't use them, not even an initial. I'm not sure why that is; I've never talked to them about it. "Miriam" is an essential part of my name, and I can't imagine not using it.

I: India. Why? I don't know. I'm not Indian; I don't pretend I am, and I don't aspire to be. But I watch Indian movies, study an Indian language, and from time to time have been known to cook Indian food or wear Indian clothes. There it is. I haven't been to India; mostly because David and I are poor planners and haven't yet gotten around to making it happen. I once joked that I decided to learn Hindi because that's the language the spoken by the voices in my head and I wanted to understand what they were saying. Sometimes that feels not too far from the truth - I have no idea where this came from.

R: Religion. It comes and goes. There have been times in my life when I could not imagine Friday night without Shabbat services. Now is not one of those times. David and I haven't gone to Shabbat services regularly in many years. I wouldn't mind getting back into the habit, but I don't want to take responsibility for it; I want David to select a congregation and say, "we're going, tonight."

A: Ambivalent attorney. Attorney is my real job; ambivalent is what I am about it. I don't dislike everything about it, and I'm trying to make some changes to my practice that, I hope, will help me enjoy my work more. But I'm already on my second career, and I'm fairly certain I won't be doing this for the rest of my life. No specific plans yet though!

M: Morphology. Well, not morphology specifically, linguistics generally. (I know, it's lame - the trouble with my middle name is that I have to come up with two entries for "I" and "M;" I can't tell you how I struggled with this one.) I've been a linguistics dilettante for as long as I can remember. I sometimes fantasize about dropping everything and heading back to graduate school to study linguistics. David worries that if I did that, it would kill my interest in it; he might be right. At any rate I remain an amateur, for now. I'm not certain what branch of linguistics I'd specialize in were I to take the plunge; perhaps some sort of comparative syntactic studies, since that is what interests me most across languages: the different structures used in different languages use to express ideas. (Examples of my musings on such concepts here and here and here.)

In completing this tag I am supposed to tag other bloggers, one for each letter in my middle name - six in all. But the last time I tried to tag some bloggers it didn't go all that well - only one of them responded to the tag. So I'm going to do something different this time. If you read this, and you have a blog of your own, consider yourself tagged. Just let me know, via a comment or an email, if you pick up the thread, and I'll add a link to your post here.

Comments

"learn Hindi because that's the language the spoken by the voices in my head" - the voices in your head are probably bad Hindi film dialogues which are stuck and refuse to be forgotten, eh :-)? I know I have trouble forgetting bad Hindi film music.

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Text (c) 2004-2011, Carla Miriam LevyThe ideas and opinions expressed in this weblog are mine alone, and do not represent the views of my employer or of any other organization with which I may be associated.